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I first knew Lenny Bruce thanks to the show The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Lenny and Miriam Maisel have a fictional friendship since they are both stand-up comedians who talk about controversial topics, especially for the time. I know about his appearance on The Steve Allen Show because it was reenacted in the show in the last episode of season two called “All Alone” which is a song he sang in the taping.
I wanted to write about him since I do know about him and I am interested to know more.
I am a big fan of the 1950s and 1960s.
Lenny is known for his black humor, profanity humor, and controversial topics that weren’t as openly discussed as today like sex, politics, religion, and race. He uses Jewish terms and Jewish culture in his comedic bits since he was Jewish. Comedians at that time just like the motion production code, were very restrictive about what they could talk about. I don’t agree that he got jailed because of his humor.
The First Part. He got arrested four times for obscenity on topics like religion blasphemy, and profanity and joked about topics that were illegal at that time like mixed marriages.
Religion Blasphemy. He got arrested for his jokes, saying the “Pope is Jewish'. He uses satire to criticize the Catholic Church like his piece “Religious Inc”.
Lenny Bruce stated, “ The reason I got busted — arrested — is I picked on the wrong god . . . the Western god — the cute god, the In-god, the Kennedy-god — and that’s where I screwed up” ( qtd. in Kaufman 132).
At that time, The Catholic Church had a lot of power and he couldn’t easily joke about it. Today we have shows like Family Guy, where they can easily touch on religious topics. By joking about religion, especially Christianity, he challenged the status quo.
Profanity. Lenny Bruce performed a skit called “A Bunch of Cocksukers” and he was arrested for the use of the swear word “cocksuckers” they believed it was against California’s obscenity law.
The Police detective officer who saw his act, “ . . . . Mr. Bruce recommended a sexual act prohibited by law.”(Schaeffer, 571)
Premarital sex was not discussed in mass media as well as pop culture. Homosexuality was also illegal. Since the target audience for pop culture was a male audience and the male appeal was important, the police might be considering that it was promoting the act of sex between two males.
The consequences were, “ Although he was acquitted, law enforcement agencies put him under greater scrutiny, resulting in drug arrests in Philadelphia and Los Angeles” (Schultz) Since this was his first obscenity arrest, the police later on put him under the radar which lead to 3 more obscenity arrests.
The Cafe Au Go Go Trial. An undercover detective was in the audience when Lenny Bruce was performing. He arrested the club owners as well as Lenny for obscenity humor and cafe owners for allowing him to perform in the club.
Brian Moylan states that “Bruce was sentenced to four months in a workhouse for a set he did in a New York comedy club that included a bit about Eleanor Roosevelt’s “nice tits,” another about how men would like to “come in a chicken,” and other scatological and overly sexual humor.” (Moylan)
He was sentenced to four months in jail. After that, a lot of club owners were worried about hiring him since they did not want to be in trouble with the government like what happened to the cafe owners of The Cafe Au Go Go. In his later life, he was banned from performing in Britain and several U.S. cities.
Lenny Bruce shouldn’t have gotten arrested, since it was freedom of speech. Satire wasn’t a popular form of comedy in pop culture and mainstream media. Lenny Bruce talked about topics that couldn’t be in mass media and pop culture like politics, race, religion, and sex, and satirized iconic figures in pop culture. Light humor, screwball, farce, situational comedies, and slapstick were what was popular in mainstream media and pop culture.
Positive reaction: The younger generation, the beat generation, and hippies the forming subcultures and countercultures that started in the late 1950s.
Negative: The people in power which is why he got arrested several times and mainstream media which is why he was brushed off from pop culture from the 1950s. I am a big fan of that era and I didn’t hear of him till I watched Marvelous Mrs Maisel. When I think of comedians of that time I think of the duo Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin and Lucille Ball. For example, The New York Times published an article on June 14, 1964, which was his final arrest, named “Lenny Bruce and 2 Cafe Owners Go on Trial in Obscenity Case”. Newspapers only talked about Lenny Bruce in a negative light like when he gets arrested and barely positive mentions about it in newspapers at that time.
I don’t agree with his arrests, Lenny Bruce was an iconic comedic figure who talked about fresh topics that no one dared to talk about at that time, like the oppressive and corruptive government, satirized racial relations like mixed marriages that were illegal at that time till 1969. He also talks about his Jewish culture which was mocked a lot in American pop culture at that time. He inspired so many iconic comedians today like Jon Stewart and Dick Gregory.
Do you think Lenny Bruce would still get jailed if he was a comedian today? or do you think our society is going backward and is so sensitive to jokes about anything?
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